The incorporation of botanical antioxidants in cosmetic products is gaining popularity due to anti aging and other skin tone enhancement benefits. Cosmetic products formulated with familiar antioxidants such as ascorbic acid, aloe, vitamin E, Coenzyme Q10, α-lipoic acid, and soy isoflavones have appeared in the marketplace with skin and hair beneficial claims. The design of a topical antioxidant product offers challenges: A wide spectrum antioxidant product should control cellular oxidation resulting from biochemical mechanisms including oxygen, free radicals, UV, atmospheric pollutants, oxidative enzymes, catabolic oxidation, and chemical oxidation.
A combination of antioxidants is usually more effective than a single antioxidant on an equal weight basis due to antioxidant cascade mechanism. The combination of antioxidant ingredients should be selected from different chemical classes to control cellular oxidation resulting from various biochemical mechanisms. The total quantity of antioxidants should be balanced carefully, as an excessive amount of antioxidants may have an opposite, pro-oxidant effect resulting in poor stability and performance of the product. This necessitates use of multiple antioxidants in a composition to provide optimized skin and hair care benefits.
It would thus be highly advantageous to combine two or more of such antioxidants into a new chemical entity that would provide synergistically enhanced benefits of the individual components. Well-known antioxidants such as aloesin, aloin, phloridzin, phloretin, curcumin, tetrahydrocurcumin, hesperidin, mangostin, mangiferin, and hypericin contain a keto group in their chemical structure. Antioxidants that are aldo or keto hydroxyacids, such as ascorbic acid and its derivatives, possess one or more vicinal diol groups that can be chemically reactive with a keto group.
The present invention discloses antioxidant agents that are derived from two different antioxidant reactants, one of which contains a keto group and the other a vicinal diol. The vicinal diol is converted to a dioxol or furan derivative via this chemical process, which results in surprisingly enhanced skin permeability of said antioxidant agent over said vicinal diol or keto antioxidant reactants. The use of a single said antioxidant agent eliminates the use of multiple antioxidants in a composition, yet imparts superior overall antioxidant treatment for skin and/or hair.
The present invention relates to complexes (hereinafter referred to as “complex”, or “complexes”, or “ascorbyl complex”) of certain aldo or keto hydroxyacids, such as ascorbic acid and its derivatives, and certain commercially well known antioxidants having a keto group; said complexes, [Furo[3,4-d][1,3]dioxol-4(6H)-ones] and/or its structural isomer, 3,4-dihydroxyfuran-2(5H)-one, both of which having various chiral, meso, racemic, and other isomeric forms.
This invention also relates to a method of treatment of a condition, such as a skin or a hair condition and the cause for such condition, such as nutritional deficiency, including dark skin, age spots, acne, inflammation, loss of cellular antioxidants, collagen loss with aging, loss of skin pliability, loss of skin suppleness, skin wrinkles, oxidation, damage from radiation, malfunction of matrix metalloproteases, malfunction of tyrosinases, damage from free radicals, damage from UV, hair loss, hair graying, nutritional deficiency, and combinations thereof.